Biden: Trump Won in 2016 Because Voters Did Not Take His Race-Baiting Seriously

President Joe Biden said on this week’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show” that former President Donald Trump won in 2016 because voters did not take his race-baiting seriously enough.

Biden said, “We the only nation that is not built on ethnicity, geography, whatever, it’s on a notion that, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ that all men and women are created equal. We’ve never fully lived up to it. We’ve never walked away from it. It’s a core of all of this, I think, is that concern. It’s a concern that  the soul is sort of the breath and the essence of who we are. Ultimately gets down to not supporting violence, not supporting making sure that you count the votes when they’re cast not, intimidating anyone who’s at the poll, not intimidating anyone who wants to vote. I still think that’s rock-bottom core issue in America.”

Jonathan Capehart said, “How did we get to this point, though?”

Biden said, “Well, I think there are a number of things that happened. Number one we had a leader who concluded that the truth didn’t matter a whole lot and used the modern version of the old racist kind of baiting that used to be the case, 40, 50 years ago in parts of the country. And I think it just, I don’t think enough people took it seriously to begin with. For me, what change things for me was I hadn’t planned on running again. I think you know this. I’m taking too much time, stop me. But when I saw those folks down in Charlottesville coming out of the fields, carrying Nazi swastikas, torches, singing the same anti-Semitic bile that was sung at a time in the 30s in Germany and accompanied by the white supremacists. The young woman got killed.”

Capehart said, “Heather Heyer”

Biden continued, “And they asked, yes I talk to her mom. When she got killed and the president was asked, what did you think, he said there are fine people on both sides. No president has ever said anything like that. It’s a reflection of this notion that whatever it takes to have power, it is appropriate. I just find it disturbing. I believe, though, that in 2020, for example, more people should’ve to vote than any time in American history. I think they’re going to do it again.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN